Tag: russia

Ukraine Says Russia is a Planning Ground Invasion of Kyiv as War Grinds Towards Fifth Year

Ukraine says it has intelligence indicating Russia is preparing for a fresh ground offensive against the capital of Kyiv.

The claim raises the prospect of another attempt to threaten the Ukrainian capital more than four years after Russia launched its invasion.

Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, said Russian military leadership have been instructed by the Kremlin to plan and prepare offensives targeting Kyiv and Chernihiv.

Ukrainian intelligence has received and verified information about the preparations, according to Palisa.

However, officials have not yet detected Russian forces massing in sufficient numbers to launch such an operation.

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Russia Hits Kiev Ammo Dump Next To Homes; Ukraine Admits 90% Of Retail Food Logistics Wrecked

A Russian drone struck a Ukrainian Defense Forces ammunition storage site in the village of Myla Friday evening, just west of Kiev. The resulting fire and hours of secondary detonations killed at least 37 people, injured dozens more, damaged around 50 residential buildings and a care home for the elderly and disabled, and forced the evacuation of hundreds. Among the dead was the local community head who had gone to help.

In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the placement of a weapons depot next to civilians was “terrible negligence.” The first impact, he said, hit a depot storing shells, mines, other munitions, and drones that “definitely shouldn’t have been there” – while prosecutors in Kiev opened a criminal investigation into the legality of storing explosives next to civilian housing. This is the second such incident in two months. A July strike on a depot in nearby Vyshneve produced similar secondary blasts, deaths, and later detentions of state defense-company executives.  

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Trump Stuns By Outright Dismissing Notion Putin Preparing To Attack A NATO State

President Trump has added fuel to the fire of controversy and speculation over the question of why CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a surprise and highly rare trip to Moscow on Tuesday.

Media accounts which seek to explain the nature of his meeting with top Kremlin intelligence officials, while apparently being snubbed by Putin in terms of a direct interaction, have shifted in days since the visit. The early ‘consensus’ was that he delivered a stern warning for Russia not to attack any NATO state. But President Trump has poured cold water on this explanation, appearing to dismiss it outright in his latest comments. 

“I’ve had good talks with him. He’s not going to be attacking a NATO territory,” Trump said of Putin on Thursday while talking to reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump didn’t answer specifically when pressed on if the president directed Ratcliffe to deliver a warning to Putin to not attack NATO. “I don’t want to comment on that but they’re not going to attack,” Trump said.

While many times over the course of the Ukraine war, European heads of state have claimed that Russia is expansionist and seeks to attack countries in Europe beyond Ukraine, this has not ever been a public allegation of Trump, who has tended to downplay it as a possibility. 

Trump did deny the reports centered on Ratcliffe in an interview with Axios Thursday, saying “Ratcliffe sees his Russian counterpart once every six months or once every year. They have a very good relationship. There was no message and there was nothing unusual.”

And when asked over whether he’s concerned that Putin might attack NATO or deeper inside Europe, Trump replied, “I am not concerned … at all. There is no problem.” According to more:

The president called Ratcliffe’s trip “standard business” and expressed puzzlement over the media accounts of it.

But the reality is that no CIA director has made such a trip in well over four years. The prior time was November 2021, when then-CIA Director William Burns traveled to Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials and issued a stark warning against invading Ukraine.

It was also highly unexpected in terms of timing, given the stalemated nature of the Ukraine conflict, and the fact that zero peace negotiations are happening. There has not even so much as been any efforts at achieving a short-term ceasefire, akin to last year’s Christmas truce.

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Zelensky Appoints Key Azov Commanders to Lead Defense of Last Strongholds in Donetsk – MSM Tries To Whitewash Their Nazi Ideology

The board is set, the pieces are moving for the battle for the last fortified bastions of Ukrainian control in Donetsk Oblast.

We have been reporting here on TGP on the impending major battle that will decide the fate of the Donbas, the cradle of the Ukraine war.

While the Luhansk region has already been fully conquered by Russia, there are still a cluster of fortified towns in northern Donetsk that have been holding since 2014.

But now, the advancing Russian forces are just a few miles from the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk ‘agglomeration’, and the fight for the ‘fortress belt’ is about to begin.

RT reported on Telegram:

“Four kilometers [2,4 miles] are left to the eastern outskirts of Slavyansk — [Russian] Chief of General Staff [Valery] Gerasimov.

Russian advance groups of assault units are fighting on the territory three kilometers from the outskirts of Kramatorsk.

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Moscow Warns It Could Target British Military Facilities In Unprecedented Statement

From the very start of the Ukraine war, the United Kingdom has consistently been among Kiev’s most open and ardent military supporters, time and again transferring heavy weaponry, including cutting edge long-range missiles like the Storm Shadow.

At the start of this week, Britain announced it plans to provide Ukraine with classified technology to allow for the country’s own manufacturing of the British/French-designed SCALP air-launched cruise missile (which in the UK is known as the Storm Shadow). The allies expect to set up a production line in Ukraine as soon as year’s end.

Already, Ukraine has used its domestic-made and designed Neptune cruise missile to strike oil refineries and military sites deep inside Russian territory. A domestic-made SCALP would present the likelihood of Ukraine then using this Western-designed missile to directly attack Russia, which only increases the chances of an eventual Moscow-NATO clash. Ukrainian forces already appeared to have used the missile on Donetsk and other locations closer to front lines in the Donbass.

On Thursday the Kremlin has issued one of its strongest warnings and threats aimed at London to date, accusing the UK of “fully taking part in the war on Kiev’s side” – and thus thwarting any chance of peace talks while adding fuel to the fire.

Moscow is now saying that the UK’s own military facilities could become fair game for direct attacks.

Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Thursday press briefing, “We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons against Russian territory could be directed against any British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond.”

Zakharova urged “all residents of the United Kingdom to think about the inevitable, catastrophic consequences of the hostile steps taken by their own authorities.” She also laid out:

“We propose that the British leadership once again carefully analyze the situation and immediately, in the most resolute and unequivocal manner, abandon the hostile, aggressive line, which can only… create the risk of the conflict escalating to an entirely new level.”

Ironically this comes just on the heels of a rare visit of the CIA Director to Moscow. US officials claim the Tuesday meeting between John Ratcliffe and top Kremlin intelligence officials was to convey a warning to President Putin to not attack any NATO member. However, many analysts are skeptical that this was the official reason.

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US Officials Reveal Reason For CIA Chief’s Surprise Moscow Visit

The Wall Street Journal has late in the day Wednesday revealed the reason for CIA John Ratcliffe’s surprise visit to Moscow yesterday where he met with top Kremlin intelligence leaders, citing officials. It was to warn against attacking NATO countries, says the Journal:

The surprise visit by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to Moscow this week was to deliver a warning to Russia not to attack NATO countries, according to people briefed on the visit.

The trip was spy-agency chief John Ratcliffe’s first publicly known visit to the Russian capital. It followed new U.S. intelligence assessments, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that Russian President Vladimir Putin could try to test the resolve of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization with a limited assault on an allied country in the next few years.

U.S. officials are concerned that Putin, squeezed in Ukraine and under pressure at home, could launch an assault ranging from a cyberattack to a small-scale land incursion, likely on a Baltic nation, the Journal reported. 

Some pundits have suggested a weaker Baltic nation like Estonia, which has long issued provocative anti-Moscow statements of its own, could come under some kind of limited attack.

The report further suggests Putin could be ready to seize on NATO’s munitions supply weakness – given the drain amid the Iran war and after over four years of constantly supplying Ukraine.

“A shortfall in critical Western munitions, driven by expenditures in the Iran war, also could factor into Putin’s thinking,“ the report continues. “The U.S. has degraded its stockpile of certain weapons because of transfers to Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion, as well as the Iran conflict.”

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CIA Director Held Covert Moscow Talks With Russian Intel Chiefs As Relations Sink Deeper Into “Crisis”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow on a US Air Force C-17 transport jet on Tuesday morning for meetings with Russian intelligence officials, according to CBS News.

The outlet cited Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who confirmed Wednesday that Ratcliffe met with senior Russian intelligence officials but not President Vladimir Putin.

Putin was later briefed on the talks, according to Peskov, who cautioned that it was too early to determine whether the meeting could help pull bilateral US-Russian relations out of their “deep crisis.”

The visit marks Ratcliffe’s first known trip to Russia since becoming CIA director, though he has maintained contact with Russian intelligence counterparts, CBS noted.

CBS continued:

Ahead of his trip, the US told Ukrainian officials that a senior delegation would be traveling to Moscow and asked Kyiv to suspend strikes until the delegation’s departure from Russia, according to a senior Ukrainian official.

The secretive trip comes as US-mediated peace talks remain stalled and Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure have stoked a refined-products crisis that is spreading worldwide in the form of diesel shortages. We must note the energy crisis has been compounded by tanker transit disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. 

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Famed Ukrainian Military Analyst Says Russian Forces are Just 7 Miles from Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, Predicts Assault of the ‘Fortress Belt’ To Begin as Soon as December

The Kramatorsk-Slavyansk Fortress belt is the last major military objective in Donetsk Oblast for the Russian forces.

For a while now, it’s become clear that the Ukrainian news outlets and analysts have become much more adept at reporting the facts than the Globalist MSM.

The legacy news ‘brands’ have usually shrunk to mere Globalist, pro-Kiev propaganda.

That’s why we will use a reputable Ukrainian source to talk about the impending battle for Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.

We have been reporting here on TGP about how the fortifications of the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration are the last major military objective for the Russian advances in Donetsk region, the cradle of the war.

And now, the endgame approaches, according to Ukrainian military analyst Oleksandr Kovalenko.

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Russia’s Bank Run — When Confidence Begins to Crack

A bank does not actually have everyone’s money sitting in a vault waiting to be returned. The entire system functions because everyone assumes they will not demand their money at the same time. Once that confidence begins to crack, the numbers on a balance sheet become secondary because people want CASH.

That is what we must now watch in Russia. Russians have been pulling billions out of the banking system, with demand for physical cash accelerating dramatically this summer. According to Russian Central Bank data cited in the press, nearly $3.4 billion was withdrawn during just the first two weeks of August after approximately $7.3 billion in July and more than $4.5 billion in June. The Central Bank itself reported that cash in circulation increased by roughly 700 billion rubles during July, compared with about 500 billion in June.

This does not mean the Russian banking system is collapsing tomorrow. Nevertheless, something much more important is taking place beneath the surface. Russians are becoming nervous about leaving their money inside the financial system. Rumors have circulated that the government could eventually freeze or commandeer private deposits to help finance the war, and once people begin questioning whether they will retain unrestricted access to their own savings, government assurances become increasingly meaningless. Fear of possible seizure has become one factor driving the movement into cash, alongside drone attacks, economic uncertainty, and disruptions to electronic payments.

This is always the danger with capital controls. Russia has already demonstrated that it will restrict access to money when the state believes national interests require it. Foreign-currency withdrawals remain restricted, and accounts belonging to various foreigners from so-called “unfriendly” nations have faced controls since the war began. Putin recently relaxed some restrictions affecting foreign depositors.

People forget that money is ultimately a question of confidence in government. You can raise interest rates to 20%, offer attractive deposits, and tell everyone that the banking system is perfectly safe, but none of that matters if people begin fearing that the state itself may change the rules. The greatest threat to a banking system is not necessarily bad loans. It is the realization among depositors that their money exists inside a political system whose rules can change overnight.

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Report: Trump Admin Requests Ukraine Refrain From Striking Russia During Meetings

The Trump administration reportedly requested that Ukraine refrain from striking parts of Russia with missiles while the United States engaged in meetings with Russian officials.

Christopher Miller, the Chief Ukraine Correspondent for the Financial Times, shared in a post on X that officials in the Trump administration had “requested that Kyiv not strike Moscow, St. Petersburg, and northern regions of Russia with its long range missiles and drones on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday when the U.S. would send a plane carrying a senior-level official to the Russian capital,” citing “people familiar with the request.”

“Ukraine agreed, they said,” Miller added. “Today we see that a U.S. Air Force C-17 plane has landed in Moscow.”

Breitbart News’s Oliver JJ Lane reported that a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III was reported to have flown “from the capital of NATO-member Latvia to an airport near Moscow, Russia on Tuesday morning”:

A U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III flew from the capital of NATO-member Latvia to an airport near Moscow, Russia on Tuesday morning. The military jet first flew on Sunday from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., reports France’s Le Figaro, citing the open source transponder data which is collected by hobbyist ground-based receivers and aggregated through services such as the Flight Radar app.

Military flights are not obliged to keep their transponders on, but it is best practice to do so for the sake of other flights in the area and air traffic control for the sake of safety. The decision to keep the transponders broadcasting over Russian airspace betrays a desire to make the flight as visible and easily identifiable as possible.

CBS News’s Senior White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs reported in a post on X that Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Ratcliffe was reported to have “traveled to Russia aboard a C-17 for meetings in Moscow today.”

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